


give me your stars to hold

by swu



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Cat is jealous of the sun, F/F, Headcanon, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, these two idiots both think they don't deserve the other and it's beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swu/pseuds/swu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kara should bleed ichor, bleed gold, bleed something more than just blood. Ferrous and earthly and so plainly <em>material</em>—Cat could touch it and it would stain her fingertips and that, somehow, just feels <em>wrong</em>."</p><p>Kara watches the sun rise and Cat watches Kara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give me your stars to hold

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t sleep all night and then around 4am this happened. I’m not quite sure what it is (aside from way too sappy and sentimental, probably) but my brain felt it was necessary.

It’s 5am and Cat finds her bleeding. On the balcony of Cat’s office, the couch blooms crimson, Kara twisted and rigid and groaning into the cushion.

She freezes for a moment in the doorway. Shocked, almost. Not to see Kara bleed—no, Cat is all too aware of Kara’s mortality. She sees it in her nightmares every time she sleeps, sees it when she’s lying awake at night, alone in the dark.

Kara bleeding; Kara crumpled on the ground, motionless beneath a tattered cape, smaller than she’s ever looked, smaller than she could ever be even when assistant Kara would try to shrink away the rest of her—the real Kara, Cat’s Kara; the Kara that is too big for her skin, too big for this Earth, too big for the rest of us to ever fully comprehend—to hide all that she is from the rest of the world. ( _From me,_ Cat reminds herself.)

(Kara never did learn how to make herself small. That was one thing she could never do.)

Kara falling, always falling (why does Cat always dream of falling?); Kara falling as Cat looks on, utterly powerless to catch her. To do anything but watch her fall.

Cat sees it in the daytime, too, if she’s being honest. She sees it every time Supergirl takes a hit that rattles her more than it should, that actually seems to touch her, and Cat is stuck in her office with her eyes glued to the same images looping on every single one of her screens because she isn’t allowed to be anywhere else. She isn’t allowed to chase after Kara. These are not her nightmares to have.

Cat knows that Kara bleeds, knows all too well that the girl isn’t invincible. (Sometimes she thinks she might be more aware of it than Kara herself is, too blinded by youth and righteousness and heroic conviction to even consider that she might not, in the end, be infallible. That she might still be mortal. That winning, _surviving_ , sometimes has nothing to do with how hard you try or how far you push yourself or how much of yourself you are willing to give.)

Cat is not shocked to find Kara bleeding on her balcony at 5am (another fight, another alien, another weapon made of kryptonite; the usual story, Cat assumes). What shocks her is the red that seeps out from the gash in Kara’s side.

For a second she thinks it’s wrong—wrong for Kara to bleed red like the rest of us, for the stuff inside her body to be so ordinary, so deceitfully _human_ , when the stuff she’s made of is anything but. There should be some indication, Cat thinks, of how much it takes to break Kara like this, of how much it takes to make a god bleed.

Cat has always been able to see through Kara’s flesh, through the layers of armor she’s built on top of it, right to her core, and she thinks that what bleeds out of Kara should be as blinding and bright as the rest of her being (her heart, her smile, her soul). Kara should bleed ichor, bleed gold, bleed something more than just blood. Ferrous and earthly and so plainly _material_ —Cat could touch it and it would stain her fingertips and that, somehow, just feels _wrong_.

She almost thinks there should be sunlight coursing through Kara’s veins instead. Why isn’t there sun inside her, making her strong, healing her wounds, doing everything that Cat cannot? Wasn’t that the promise—Earth’s yellow sun will make her strong. Earth’s yellow sun will shield her from pain. Earth’s yellow sun will keep her alive. Earth’s yellow sun will save her.

The stars should take care of their own.

Wordlessly, Cat kneels by Kara’s side and unclips the cape from her shoulders (as if that might lift the world off her shoulders along with it), easing Kara up until she’s half sitting, half cradled in Cat’s lap.

The balcony is silent; Kara’s breathing, strained and shallow, is too loud in Cat’s ears. Cat brushes the sweat-slick hair away from Kara’s face.

 _What do you need?_ she asks, implores, but somehow her lips can’t seem to form the words. (There’s a first time for everything, she thinks, even a speechless Cat Grant. But then she remembers that this isn’t a first with Kara, not by a long shot. Cat isn’t Cat Grant around Kara anymore. She’s not sure she ever was.)

She says nothing, but Kara hears her anyways. Kara always hears her anyways.

Kara looks up at her, and Cat asks again. She asks with fingers combing through matted hair and eyes that refuse to blink. _What do you need?_

Kara lifts her own hand to Cat’s and stills it, pressing her cheek into Cat’s palm, eyes never leaving Cat’s. Kara’s eyes burn into hers, they burn and burn but Cat can’t look away.

_What do you need, Kara?_

_(What can I do? I know I cannot catch you. I can’t be everything you need, can’t give you everything you deserve. But I am here, so tell me what to do. Tell me how to save you.)_

She feels Kara’s skin warm against her fingertips and Kara’s gaze warm inside her chest and there’s a little hopeful part of her that hears,

_You, Cat. I need you._

(Cat has never been as good at listening as Kara is; there’s always that part of her—the romantic, perhaps, that once dreamed of empires—that can’t help hearing what she wants to hear.)

Kara looks away, finally. (It’s too soon, much too soon, and yet Cat almost sighs in relief). She looks out across the city, through the maze of towers plated with chrome and glass, to the spot in the east where the darkness is just starting to lift.

The sun. It’s always the sun.

Kara needs the sun. The sun makes her strong, the sun will fix this, the sun will save her. Cat already knew this—she feels the coming dawn like a promise, an apology, like each beat of her heart is counting out the seconds that remain until the sun once again kisses the horizon—but something inside her breaks all the same.

The sun makes Kara strong. The sun will fix this. The sun will save her.

It’s the one thing Kara needs. The one thing she can’t live without.

The sun, the sun, the sun. (Look away, look away, look away.)

Kara watches the sun rise and Cat watches Kara. She watches the color return to Kara’s cheeks, Kara’s lips, feels the strength return to Kara’s limbs. Her eyes trace the edges of Kara’s hair as it starts to glow golden. Kara’s whole body glows golden, lit from within, the sun reflecting back outward through her skin, gauzy and soft, like a dream right before you wake—and this is why Cat always thinks there must be something else in her veins, something more.

 _My angel,_ Cat thinks. _My shooting star. My golden sun._

Or maybe she whispers it, maybe her want speaks so loudly that this time Kara really _can_ hear it. Maybe that’s why, in this moment, Kara looks back at her.

But this time when Kara looks at her, Cat can’t meet her eyes. She looks away. She looks at the horizon, at the city, at anything but this sunlit girl in her arms.

Her want thunders in her ears ( _my angel, my star, my sun_ ), but even as her hands linger too long on Kara’s skin, she looks away.

This is not her dream to have.

**Author's Note:**

>  _I am the pool of gold_  
>   When sunset burns and dies—  
> You are my deepening skies,  
> Give me your stars to hold.


End file.
